After Effects Workspace

A. Application window B. Tools panel C. Project panel

D. Composition panel E. Timeline panel F. Time ruler

G. Grouped panels (Info and Audio) H. Time Controls panel I. Effects & Presets panel

An After Effects project is a single file that stores references to all the footage you use in that project. It also contains compositions, which are the individual containers used to combine footage, apply effects, and, ultimately, drive the output.

A composition is where you create all animation, layering, and effects. An After Effects composition has both spatial dimensions and a temporal dimension called a duration or length in time.

Compositions include one or more footage items video, audio, still images arranged in the Composition panel and in the Timeline panel. Simple projects may include only one composition, while elaborate projects may include several compositions to organize large amounts of footage or intricate effects sequences.

A footage item is the basic unit in an After Effects project. You can import many types of footage items, including moving image files, still-image files, still-image sequences, audio files, layered files from Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, other After Effects projects, and projects created in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Layers are the components you use to build a composition. Any item that you add to a composition such as a still image, moving image file, audio file, light layers, camera layers, or even another composition becomes a new layer. Without layers, a composition consists only of an empty frame.

Using layers, you can work with specific footage items in a composition without affecting any other footage. For example, you can move, rotate, and draw masks for one layer without disturbing any other layers in the composition, or you can use the same footage in more than one layer and use it differently in each instance.

Tools panel

A. Selection B. Hand C. Zoom

D. Rotation E. Orbit Camera F. Pan Behind

G. Rectangular Mask H. Pen I. Horizontal Type

J. Brush K. Clone Stamp L. Eraser

About the Timeline panel

Use the Timeline panel to animate layer properties and set In and Out points for a layer. (In and Out points are the points at which a layer, or footage item, enter and exit the composition.) Many of the Timeline panel controls are organized in columns of related functions. By default, the Timeline panel contains a number of columns and controls, as shown in the following figure:

A. Timeline panel name B. Current time C. Switches/Modes column

D. Layer Bar/Graph Editor area E. Audio/Video Switches column

F. Source Name/Layer Name column G. Timeline panel switches H. Composition button

The time graph portion of the Timeline panel (the right side) contains a time ruler, markers to indicate specific times, and duration bars for the layers in your composition.

A. Time navigator start and end brackets B. Work area start and end brackets

C. Time ruler D. Timeline options E. Zoom slider

F. Comp button G. Navigator view H. Comp marker bin

The duration of a composition, a layer, or a footage item is represented visually in the time ruler. On the time ruler, the current-time indicator indicates the frame you are viewing or editing, and the frame appears in the Composition panel.

The work area start and end brackets indicate the part of the composition that will be rendered or previewed. When you work on a composition, you may want to preview or render only part of a composition. Do this by specifying a part of the composition time ruler as a work area. A composition's current time appears in the upper-left corner of the Timeline panel.